The Living in Your Car Podcast
The Living in Your Car Podcast
Surviving and Thriving in Solo Car Living
Are you prepared to transform the way you view solo car travel? Brace yourselves as we navigate the thrilling and sometimes daunting world of solitary road trips, particularly for women traveling alone. In this journey, we're going to turn your fear into curiosity and show you how to manage risks and embrace the freedom that comes with living in your car.
Exuding confidence on the road begins with setting boundaries and planning for those inevitable inquiries about your mobile living situation. We'll tackle the heated debate around carrying weaponry for protection, and discuss the ins and outs of maintaining your stealth when sleeping in your vehicle. We'll also explore the essentials of food and garbage storage, keeping wildlife at bay, and why monitoring weather and natural disasters is a must-do.
As we shift gears into the realm of preparation, we'll equip you with the information you need to be ready for camping in extreme weather conditions, handling emergencies, and managing health issues on the road. We'll highlight the importance of having a trusted point of contact, essential car emergency gear, and the know-how to handle being stranded. Plus, we'll dive into the necessity of a reliable water filter system for off-grid living. So fasten your seatbelts as we journey through the realities, risks, and rewards of solo car living.
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https://www.youtube.com/@elizabethoffgrid
Hi, this is Elizabeth Off-Grid, and you are listening to the Living in your Car podcast, where we talk about all aspects of living in a car, suv, pickup or minivan. Whether you're a full-time nomad, temporarily staying in a vehicle until you get life figured out or just going on a road trip, join us for all kinds of topics that apply to you. This is the first episode of a podcast that I am starting about living in a car, of course, as soon as I start recording car drives by making a really loud noise, and we're going to be talking about all kinds of different topics in upcoming episodes. This one is about the dangers of traveling alone. We're going to talk about safety, traveling alone as a woman, and not just about being a solo female, but this really is true for anybody who is traveling alone, and that's one of the things that I want to start with is that the danger isn't really about being female, about being a woman even though there are a few dangers, I admit, that really are more about that than to someone who doesn't present as female. Most of the dangers are just because you're by yourself. You're by yourself, you don't have backup, especially if you don't have good communication, and that means that if something happens that makes it so, you aren't able to do anything about it. There ain't no one doing anything about it for you because there's nobody else there. So that's the biggest danger there. It's about being alone, not about being a woman. We'll talk a little bit about the dangers of being a woman traveling alone Before we really get into it.
Elizabeth Off Grid:I did want to talk a little bit about the concept of safety. So so often people will be saying to someone who's traveling by themselves how are you going to stay safe? How are you going to not have anything bad happen to you? And, of course, the truth is safety is an illusion. It is a lie we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night. It is a feeling that we feel subjectively. There is no objective safe.
Elizabeth Off Grid:However, it is definitely true that there are objective risks that we can manage and reduce. We can mitigate those risks and we can also decide if the risks are worth it, and what risks are worth it for you is different than for me. For me, there was a time where I wanted to jump out of a plane and actually use a parachute. Sounds bizarre, but I use a parachute and you know, go skydiving. I don't want to do that anymore for many reasons, but at this point in my life the risk management does not make sense for me. That may not be true for you and that's not right or wrong, because deciding what risks you're willing to take and whether or not they're worth it for you is subjective. That is a your own process.
Elizabeth Off Grid:However, there are objective things you can do to reduce the likelihood of problems happening the reduced likelihood of a risk as well as to mitigate the harm. So those are different things. One is we want the rest to be less likely to happen, and the other is, if that bad thing happens, we want to have the damage be less. Hopefully the bad thing won't happen at all, so we won't have to deal with any of these things. But that's the idea, and there's two different things. You're never going to create a situation where you are objectively safe, because that doesn't exist. You are unsafe living in a house. You're unsafe living in an apartment. There's no such thing as objectively 100% safe. However, you can feel safe and one of the ways you feel safe is by planning and strategizing and managing the risks that you encounter such that you know what you're going to do, and then you can feel less anxiety, you can feel calm and you can feel capable to handle what happens.
Elizabeth Off Grid:Most of the time, people focus on one of the dangers. There's five different categories of danger and most people who know you are probably focused on the number one danger. This isn't the most likely or the most important when it really comes down to it. But first, danger, which is the danger from other people, and that's the one that most people focus on. But there's five different categories which I'm going to talk about in detail, but let's just go through them real quick the dangers from other people, the dangers from wildlife, which includes animals, insects, snakes, you know those different things. The third is weather and natural disasters. The fourth is illness or sickness, something happening to you. And then the fifth is mechanical problems, because you're traveling in a car and you have mechanical problems in this car, or any of your gear for that matter. Some of the same solutions for that, some of the same ways to mitigate, to lower the risk, is true for all of these different categories and some of the same things will help you in all of them. But then there's also things that are important about each category, so let's kind of get into it. So the dangers from other people.
Elizabeth Off Grid:I think it's interesting to me how often people who know me will be all like, oh, you're traveling alone and get into this whole thing, that I'm so at risk for people randomly assaulting me or raping me or whatever it is. But they don't talk about the fact that I live alone in the city. Before that I lived alone in the city, I lived alone in the suburbs. But a lot of people who travel alone, they lived alone first in an apartment or a house or whatever it was. So it's kind of interesting. They were so worried about it with people in a car and I guess the idea is that you're more at risk because you're not in a house or an apartment. Is that actually true? The risk is when you're out in the world. I agree with you, but you're out in the world. Unless you literally don't leave your house or apartment ever, you're going to be out in the world. Sometimes it's more likely that someone is going to be assaulted because of the way they're out in the world not in a car, but walking. You know they're walking down the street, they're at a bar really late at night, like there's a lot of situations you can get yourself into. That definitely increases the risk, especially if you drinking alcohol, if you've done drugs, whatever it is, and you somehow had your capacity lowered. Because. So here's what we're going to talk about with how to reduce this risk.
Elizabeth Off Grid:First thing and this is true about all these things is situational awareness. You need to have your wits about you and be paying attention to what's going on around you. So that means I don't drink, I don't use drugs. There have been times in my life where I did. I don't do that anymore for many reasons. One is because I'm in my car and I need to be able to drive at any time, from a cop pulling you over kind of perspective. But it's also because I'm in my car and I need to be able to drive at any time. That's the thing is. I want to be able to get away. I don't want my capacity diminished so I can't see what's going on around me. You want to always be paying attention whether or not you can visually see, but if your windows are covered, you need to be listening to what's going on and you want to keep an eye on what's happening and related to that. The second part of this is you need to be willing to leave, be willing and able to leave at any time. So you get in the car, you drive away, you, even if you paid for that campsite either, you don't know where you're going to go, you leave.
Elizabeth Off Grid:There's an inherent bias that we have where we don't want to change our minds because we feel like that's a bad thing to do. But the truth is get out. The truth is you need to get out and always be able to do that. Trust your gut that if your situation is just like sketchy, you're out. I actually feel safer in a car than I do in a house or apartment. Because of that, because I can leave, that if I'm in a house, apartment, I can't just leave if my neighbors are terrible or something and yes, that happened. I had a neighbor who was violent and abusive and I call the cops many times. They did nothing. I actually had to sue the guy to get him to stop. You know I'm a lawyer so I can do things like that, and that took there was months of a horrible experience. But now if I'm at a campground and my neighbor's terrible, I can just leave, I'm not stuck.
Elizabeth Off Grid:The third thing in this is have a plan for what you're going to say when someone talks to you about whether or not you live in a car, where you're going to be tonight, where you're planning to sleep, all the things that a nosy person could ask. You want to have a story that may or may not be true and you're going to say this to protect yourself. If someone asks me where you're staying tonight, I never tell them the answer Never. I have all kinds of things that I've said over the years. I live in my carful time now, but there was a time where I just, you know, went on a little road trips by myself. I never say, even if I was staying in a hotel, I would not say where I'm going, because it's none of the strangers business and nothing good can come out of it. I typically will say I don't know where I'm staying or some sort of. I have a couple places in mind. I haven't picked it yet, something like that. If someone wants to get in, keeps asking, then I will just be like you know, I don't answer that question. One of the things is you need to have very good boundaries and if someone starts crossing those boundaries, I have no problem lying to get out of the situation.
Elizabeth Off Grid:A fourth thing in this is about weapons. So a lot of times people who love me will be like thinking that I should have a weapon with me is more likely that a weapon will be used against you than you'd be using against the back. So that's the first thing. But even putting that aside, you can't carry a gun and live in your car and travel around different states. You just can't. That ain't gonna work. And the reason it's not gonna work is because if you are licensed to have a gun in your state, that license doesn't necessarily carry you to other states, and there's some states that definitely won't recognize it. I get them some some. There are states in the United States where you don't need a license for a handgun. You can't go to California if you got that gun with you. That ain't gonna work. It's a huge number of different rules for each state, what you would need to do, and if you live in a car it just doesn't make any sense unless you stay in one state. If you live in Texas, and you're in Texas all the time, that's one thing, but if you're traveling all around it ain't gonna work.
Elizabeth Off Grid:Same kind of thing with pepper spray. There are states where you it is illegal to have pepper spray, where you have to have a license to have pepper spray, so there's a whole nother issue. Now you can't have bear spray as long as you intend to only use it against bears. I'll just leave that there. I do have bear spray I, and I actually got it for use against bears. But there's that, obviously, you can carry a baseball bat with you, you can have knives, you know all kinds of things like that, but it is important to not be thinking about oh, I'm going to use this weapon to defend myself.
Elizabeth Off Grid:The number one goal is to get the heck away. Obviously, taking self-defense classes, learning martial arts there's many things you can do that will help you if you get into a situation where you have to fight, but we don't want you in that situation. We want you to leave, to get away, to never be in that situation. And so getting to the last parts about this how do you avoid the situation is stealth. I'm a firm believer in being as stealth as possible. So when you go to sleep because when you're at sleep, that's the most risky thing, because you're literally unconscious we don't want people to know that there's someone by themselves sleeping in that car. So what can you do?
Elizabeth Off Grid:I, when I sleep somewhere, I pull in in the dark, set up my window coverings and I go to sleep. I don't sleep where I hang out, except in a campground, but that's a different category. I'm talking about when I'm sleeping stealth and on the side of the road or in a pullout or on you know somewhere like that, in an area where there's other people. I don't want anyone to know that I'm sleeping there by myself. Now, historically, what I used to do at campgrounds was I used to bring two chairs and set them both up. So if someone just happened to see me there, they would think, oh, there's two people here. I don't do that anymore because I literally don't have room to have a second chair. Like that would just be ridiculous. But I think that's a great idea, for if you have the space to have a second chair and you go ahead and set it up, because that gives you like it looks like there's somebody here and that does make it less likely that someone will assume you're alone.
Elizabeth Off Grid:The last thing in this category is you always want to be able to communicate with somebody else. So this is where having something like a satellite communicator and I'm is a Zolio device is the one that I have. There's the Garmin in reach and there's other ones probably too. I think this is really important. So your phone always needs to be charged, but if your phone doesn't have connectivity, you have some kind of satellite way to connect with people. I don't plan to press the SOS button here. I didn't even buy this for the SOS. What I bought this for was a fact that so I could text people when I am not. I don't have any other connectivity, and that is just amazingly valuable. Also, you can be pressing this little check thing and I think all of them have something like this which gives the actual GPS location of where you're at, and so that way your whoever, your emergency contact, sir, if they have to call the sheriff, they have to call the police, whatever some kind of rescue services they know your last GPS location. So those people have a place to start.
Elizabeth Off Grid:All right, let's go into category number two wildlife, animals, insects, all that stuff. Some of the same things apply here, obviously, but it depends on where you are, what the dangers are. So in some places it's going to be things like bears and bears. We're talking about having bear spray, talking about a bell on your backpack, but talking about being loud, making sure that all your stuff is separated from you when you're sleeping. So it's hanging in a pre thing, it is in a bear canister, it is in a cabinet that is for to lock up stuff, not just your food, but anything that smells. You don't want to just have between the bear and you the fabric of a tent wall of some kind. You have anything in here that smells. So for me, I just roll up my wind. When I'm in bear country, like grizzly bear country, I just roll up my windows and that's how I function. That wouldn't necessarily work everywhere, but I'm talking about places like Yellowstone. I'm sure the rule may be different if you're in, you know, canada, alaska. There are places where bears may be have different habits, but it's more like Yellowstone. I just roll up the windows. I also have all the windows covers you can't see in.
Elizabeth Off Grid:You want to think about having all your food and your garbage in hard sided containers. So often I'll see people who live in a van and their van gets infected and infested with bugs or with mice or rats and they open their cabinet and they have like flour or pasta or crackers just in a little bag and I got eaten through by these mice and I'm like, well, yeah, that's, it's not even sealed up, I just got a little clip on it. What? How you store food in your house is not necessarily going to be what's going to work instead of a car. I do have food sitting out here right now, but that's only because I'm actively. Why I'm not actively eating this, these wheat things? Right, the second, but I was eating them today when I go to bed.
Elizabeth Off Grid:This stuff is going to be put away inside plastic containers. So I make your trash having your food all inside containers that are hard, sided to make it and sealed to make it more likely that they can't get in. I'm not saying they won't be able to get in there, eventually, left to their own devices, but it makes it less likely. I actually found an ant inside one of my plastic containers because it got in when it was open, when I was using it. Right, that's the ideas you end. And also A cooler, a freezer, something that actually closes all the way. There are ones that are actually allegedly bear-proof. I don't know if that's actually true, but the idea is we want to make it to be less attractive. The thing is is that there there's two different dangers from From wildlife. One is them to attack you. The other is that they get into all your stuff. I listen to getting into our stuff socks. I've been attacking you as a much bigger deal, but I'm getting into all yourself as much more likely.
Elizabeth Off Grid:You also want to think about, with things like Insects or a snake bite or somehow you getting injured by some kind of animal or bug or bit by something, what's your first aid kit? So you always want to have a fairly Well-thought out first aid kit. What you need in there really depends on where you're going and what kinds of things you may encounter. But revisit your first aid kit to make sure it has the stuff in it that's right for your situation. You know you may want to have obviously bug spray right, so you're less likely to get bit up by all kinds of bucks. But you may not. In some places, like when I go to Alaska, I'm not gonna just have bug spray for mosquitoes or Citronella candle, I actually am gonna get stuff to go over like a thing that goes on your hat. So you have netting all over you because the mosquitoes, the biting flies like in these places. They are terrible and just spraying yourself a stuff ain't gonna work. So you have to look at the places You're going to to see what is appropriate there.
Elizabeth Off Grid:Oh, also, I think sometimes when people are new to camping they don't realize that they can't just leave their food and their garbage sitting there on the picnic table at the campground Because something will get into it. So I've seen raccoon. I've been sitting at a pic at the picnic table in my campsite eating and my garbage bag was literally just down the end of the Table and I've seen raccoon get up in there. They were in no fear and start getting into it. Yesterday, when I was at the north room of the Grand Canyon, I was sitting there on my laptop actually doing work, and a Raven walked over, walked over to my table and jumped up On the table and was just looking around all my stuff to see if there's anything to eat. I'm like the thing is these animals, especially in campgrounds, are do don't have a fear of human beings anymore, and so they will get into your stuff literally when you're standing there. So you want to make sure everything's put away. That's the short version of that.
Elizabeth Off Grid:Now let's talk about number three, which is weather and natural disasters. So this is where the thing I talked about before having the satellite device is gonna be very helpful. Now, if you're somewhere where you have connectivity, you can check your phone to see what the weather is gonna be, using whatever app you want to use. You can get alerts on your phone. But what if you're off-grid? What if you have no connectivity? That's where you want to have a satellite device. You should always be getting weather every day, because if you're out in the middle of nowhere Down a dirt road and it's gonna be a horrible thunderstorm, that's gonna be a problem for you. How are you gonna get back up that road? It's full of mud and Now maybe you have some super lifted, four by four, whatever. But even then you may still have problems.
Elizabeth Off Grid:If your camp somewhere and it's a wash, you want to know that's not gonna rain and wash you down out and to your demise. You need to know if there's gonna be lightning. If you're near the top of mountain, like, there's so many weather things that could impact you that you need to know about. So you also always want to check Before you go off-grid see what the circumstances are, for example, wildfires. Are there any prescribed burns going on? Are there any wildfires that have started? You want to know that before you go out there. You also want to look at long-term weather predictions. Is there a hurricane coming in? You know things that are far out, but they're eventually going to be impacting you and, just like I talked about earlier, this is about situational awareness. This is about being willing to leave. So if things start to get bad, if you see these clouds coming in, if you see the levels of the water rising, you need to take action ASAP and not just sit there and do nothing and be like, no, I love this place, that's nice, let's not die. So, because the number one goal here is to not die, so you that's when you have to leave, and keeping an eye on what's going on is very, very important and being realistic about what you're able to do.
Elizabeth Off Grid:I know right now I'm totally fine sleeping in the 30 degree Fahrenheit, which around zero Celsius Below, that I'm not set up for it, because my CPAP won't work. My batteries are going to have problems powering the CPAP. I'm going to have condensation problems that impact the CPAP, which is. You know, if I have my windows rolled up, then my CPAP gets too much condensation. I haven't figured out all that stuff yet. I actually have no problem keeping myself warm. It's actually because I have the issues with the CPAP that I'm still working on.
Elizabeth Off Grid:So you need to know your own limitations, for what weather you're willing to deal with and what temperature variations. Same thing for sleeping. I can't sleep if it's 95 degrees because my CPAP isn't working and also I'm miserable and have major problems and I'm going to be very grumpy and not be able to sleep. So I do have like, if it snows, I have my cables in the car, I have some snow stuff in the car, but not I don't have my snow clothes in the car because it's just too much bulk to carry along with all my summer stuff at the same time, which is like right now. It got to be the 80s today, so I still need my summer things. So I didn't also bring my winter things. The day after I left Yellowstone last week it snowed there.
Elizabeth Off Grid:So when you're going into national parks, when you're going to high elevation, when then you're going down to deserts, you may deal with literally every season of weather and you need to be prepared for that or know that you're not prepared for it and know that you need to leave. So, having that awareness, not just of the situation but awareness of yourself, I think it's a good idea to always have rain gear with you, to always have some minimal level of snow stuff with you, even just cables for your car, and I have, like the scraper things. You know all that kind of stuff, having some minimal level of things. You always want to make sure you have extra water. You always want to make sure that you have extra blankets. You know things where, if there is a problem, that you're set up to deal with it.
Elizabeth Off Grid:So number four is injury and sickness. This is one of the most likely things that to happen if you live in a car, if you travel extensively, is eventually you're going to be injured or you're going to get sick, and so how are you going to handle that? This is where having your emergency supplies and your first day kit is going to be very important. You need to think about if you're, if you only live in your car in town, obviously this isn't that big of a deal because you can just go to Walgreens, cvs, whatever pharmacy, and get the meds that you need. But if you're going to be far, far out there, what meds do you need in your first day kit? So you need to look at you know what sicknesses do you typically get and, as such, what things should always be in your first day kit.
Elizabeth Off Grid:If you're someone who gets yeast infections fairly often, maybe you should just buy some of that yeast infection medicine and have it in there. Yeah, eventually it will expire. After a year or two or something. It probably has an expiration date, but in the meanwhile you have it. Because if you're way, way out there, buy yourself as two o'clock in the morning you're gonna be having problems. And even if you get to a town, the town stuff may not be open 24 or seven Walmart's all open 24 hours a day. Where are you going to get this right? There may be a 24 hour pharmacy somewhere, but it may be two hours away from where you are.
Elizabeth Off Grid:If you're in a remote enough place, obviously, having your satellite communication device is very important for injuring sickness, because if you get injured where you cannot extract yourself, then pushing the SOS button is what you need to do. Now, don't be wrong push the SOS button may be horribly expensive. I saw a video where she actually had a problem and put this, pushed the button and a helicopter came out there and it was gonna cost $60,000. Now she had a garment device and had paid for the like search and rescue insurance or something, and so she didn't have to pay for all that. She just had to pay some kind of deductible. But she ended up paying $1,000. She also didn't have health insurance. She had many problems, but that's something to be aware of.
Elizabeth Off Grid:Emergency SOS button is not to be pushed lightly. However, it is good to have it. If I'm hiking by myself, which I do, and I'm way out in there and a giant boulder falls on my leg and I know I'm not going to be able to extract myself and I'm on a trail where I don't have connectivity and no one comes along very often, then yeah, that might be the only solution is to push that button Now. Before I would do that, I would actually, if I can this is working I would first message my people and see if I can get help without having to push the spot, because that actually might be faster and would have you have a lot cheaper. It also depends Do they have to send out a helicopter, or is that road plus enough? Not in reality right now the kind of hikes I do, it's highly unlikely I would have to push the SOS button because I tend to be on the high on trails that other people come down and I'm not that far off from the road. They wouldn't probably send a helicopter, they would just send people to get me because I don't go on like scrambling up a mountain kind of things. I just I just know where I'm at right now. But it is a good thing to have and also just being able to text people like.
Elizabeth Off Grid:Another thing that this Odeo has is that you can actually message medical professionals to give you advice so they can give you some tips and things like that. And that would be very helpful because I have my health insurance. Kaiser actually does have a travel thing part as part of it. I mean Kaiser of Northern California, and with that I actually can't call and talk to somebody and get advice. But that obviously is not very helpful if I don't have any way to use my phone. So then I would message these people to get some advice before the SOS button gets pushed. Also, tell someone your plans so if you.
Elizabeth Off Grid:They don't hear from you for a really long time. You could have been injured or you could have gotten sick or whatever it is. Someone is aware of where you are and can start investigating what's going on. If you go on a hike and you're there's, you're going to be out for a while. You can leave a note in your car of who you are. It probably says who you are in your car because you're licensed registration. But you know what, where you went, all that kind of stuff Because if your car has just been there for this really long time, they start investigating. What's happening. You know is this person hasn't come back. Where are they and you can say what trail you're going on. At least they have a place to start.
Elizabeth Off Grid:And also, with injury and sickness, you want to think about your particular health condition. So I have diabetes, so that means I need to have the stuff that a diabetic needs to have. I always have snacks with me, so if my blood sugar gets low, I can have that. I also have the little tablets too, which I have not tried. I don't know if they might be disgusting, but it'd be better than nothing. But I, when I'm hiking, when I'm in my car, always have snacks with me, so I can always catch that low blood sugar. And then I also have things that I do with my blood sugars too high, such as eating protein. Sometimes exercising helps, sometimes it doesn't, so it just really depends Drinking water there's a bunch of things that I do with my blood sugars too high. It doesn't happen very often anymore, but sometimes when I have high altitude, I can't.
Elizabeth Off Grid:I also have problems with, as I said, altitude. So if I go up too high too fast I can get a horrible headache that feels to me like a migraine, but it's actually the beginnings of beginnings of altitude sickness. The remedy for altitude sickness is to come off the mountain, it's to come down, and I have had had to do that. I've had to leave, and that goes back to the whole. Be willing to leave, whatever the conditions are that may apply to that particular situation or to your own health personally. You need to be set up for that. I also have knee problems. So not only do I have my hiking poles, I have a cane that is like a collapsible cane that I could use if my knees are really having my knees really having a problem. I also have like a, a knee wrap thing that I can use. So whatever your personal conditions are, you want to make sure that you're set up to handle any of those complications.
Elizabeth Off Grid:The fifth is mechanical problems, and I'm mostly talking about your vehicle, but also any of your stuff. You want to have emergency gear for your car, which includes things like oil, water, spare tire. So they don't put spare tires in new cars. A lot of times I don't even. I don't even understand that I have a. I just have a donut spare tire. With this car I'm planning for my next vehicle, I'll be going down a lot more dirt roads. We'll have a full size spare tire, maybe even two. We'll see if I end up doing that or not and you want to have stuff to change the tire. So I don't just have the tire iron that came with the car. I have one of these big, huge cross ones because I can actually use those. I can get enough leverage that with one. That's just the short little stick. I can't actually take a tire off. I've tried. So you want to know how to change a tire.
Elizabeth Off Grid:You want to have emergency gear, other things for your car to fill up air in your tires, which can include your spare tire or your regular tires. You want to have the ability to jump your own car. So I have a battery. I have two. I have two batteries to jump my car. Plus I have jumper cable. I have a lot of stuff. So you want to have a lot of things to deal with the kind of ordinary problems that happen fairly often with the vehicle.
Elizabeth Off Grid:For some people it may make sense to carry extra gasoline. It may make sense to have obviously you would always have water for any emergency situation. You want to think about both things to fix your car and then also what stuff you need if you're stranded. So you want to have water, food, extra prescription medications, you want to have blankets, all the different things you need to do to keep yourself fed, hydrated, warm. So if you are stuck somewhere for days because your car is stuck, you don't die. It's a short version of that. You want to make sure that if your car is stuck because it doesn't work, for whatever reason, you don't die and it may take a couple days for someone to be able to extract you or to come along or whatever it is if you're in a remote enough place.
Elizabeth Off Grid:You also want to have backups for the gear in your car. So what I mean is having a backup way to be warm, a backup way to cook your food, a backup way to have water, all that kind of stuff. So, for example, I see people who have an RV of some kind or a van and they have a heater to keep warm and that's great. However, what if your heater breaks? How are you going to keep warm that night? You want to have a negative 40 sleeping bag or enough blankets or whatever it is to keep warm. That's the number one thing is shelter effectively. You also want to have backup food. So if your food gets infested or if you can't cook your food, you want to have other ways to cook food as well. Like what if you run out of propane or your propane stove doesn't work or whatever? You want to have another way to cook food or just backup food that doesn't need to be cooked. You know bars or whatever. It is food that you can survive on that doesn't have to be cooked.
Elizabeth Off Grid:You want to have a backup thing for your water.
Elizabeth Off Grid:So I think everyone should have with them some kind of water filter that so they can just whatever ambient water is around.
Elizabeth Off Grid:They can filter that and drink it. It could be one of those life straws. It could be a more traditional filter system, but you want some way to be able to use water that's around and be able to drink that water. Now you can also boil water, but that is going to use some of your fuel and then you might create a problem with that. So I think it's a good idea to also have some kind of filter system and leave boiling water for, kind of, the backup to your back. So again, this is Elizabeth off grid, and this is the living in your vehicle or living in your car podcast, and we talked about safety, traveling alone, traveling as a solo female person. If you have any feedback or any other things you want to share about this, leave them in the comments below if you are on YouTube, or leave it in the comments wherever they are, wherever you're listening to this podcast. And thanks for listening, thanks for watching, talk to you next time, bye, bye.